Saurin
As we travelled east from Nosgoth, it became apparent that the remaining Locator spell was not in Roto-Mar as we had thought, but was in some much closer ruins. We hoped it might belong to the troublesome kobold, and that this would give us a chance to interrogate him. So we landed.
The locator spell was underground, so Sarah transformed into Leviazyzmoth and put her tremorsense to good work. There was a vertical shaft leading down from the center of the ruins. We descended a ladder into a complex of dark and ominous rooms.
Rather than explore fully, we followed our Locator-Locator spell. It pointed to a high-backed swivel chair facing away from us.
Not wanting to walk into a trap, even of the merely melodramatic kind, I asked Clarence to Analyze the room. There was no kobold present, merely a locator spell hanging from seven Trip Wires. Ominous.
Analyze proved particularly adept at judging the wires. They were fragile, and would activate if broken. One teleported the spell far into the west. Another activated the screen in front of the chair. And the rest activated things throughout the complex.
We knew where the other activation targets were, so we backtracked to find one.
We found a collection of powered down Steve-avatars in glass cases. The glass cases were connected to gasoline generators, which would open the cases and presumably wake the avatars. The Trip Wires would activate the generators.
So, had we simply cut the wires, we'd have been at one end of an underground labyrinth, with ten to fifteen Steve-avatars between us and the exit. Also the spell would be gone and the video-conference system would activate, presumably to facilitate gloating. A well-set trap.
I was tired of maintaining charge on my hyperbreakers, so I forced one of the glass cases and smashed the avatar within. It started to stir, but didn't get itself together before I destroyed it. Alas, idle avatars have no spells, so I obtained no loot in the process.
Clarence, meanwhile, snipped the outgoing wires from the generator and took the fuel source, a flask of ever-flowing gasoline.
We contemplated clearing the rest of the complex, but it didn't seem worth it. Instead, we returned to the room with the Locator spell. Clarence, as Panasonico, powered the computer and screen without the generators. He disconnected the local camera on general principles. Then he clipped the Trip Wire that activated the video conference.
For a moment, we saw Saurin on the screen. He looked startled. Then confused (presumably by the lack of video from our side). Then he pulled out a box of Trip Wires. Then he looked thoughtful. Then he put them back.
We began racing through the complex to disable the remaining generators before he decided to activate his trap manually.
We got all but one. It freed two avatars. But it seems avatars need time to receive spells, and we were on them before that. It wasn't much of a fight. We did pick up a few mons from them, but they weren't very good.
We then returned to the videoconference room. The Locator spell was gone. But Clarence was able to reactivate the VC rig. It was decided that I should talk, since I had the least recognizable voice.
Saurin was indeed there. (Saurin? Sorin? Sauran? -- I should have asked how to spell his name.)
He asked who I was and I told him "The person you just tried to kill." I asked what he was doing and he told me "Seeing to the Emeralds." It was shaping up to be one of those conversations.
There's no free lunch. But sometimes you can get a nibble by offering a chance.
I told him that I held no grudge against him, and might be willing to help him if I liked his goals.
He offered me money for an Emerald.
I told him I didn't care about money.
He offered me power.
(He did not offer me my father back, that son of a bitch.)
Specifically, he offered me a medium powerful enough to summon The Pawn. I denied any knowledge of any Pawn, but he wasn't impressed. So much of an unrecognizable voice. He's been watching us. Are there divination spells?
I asked if this medium would drive me insane, but he refused to answer.
He also didn't want to meet me directly. He gave me a place to drop the Emerald, and a place where he'd leave the medium if I did. Or maybe he thought I wouldn't want to come into his physical presence? If I were seriously tempted, what I really wouldn't want is to pay my half of the bargain and then have to trust him to pay up.
But apparently that was as much talking as he saw any point in. He ended the call there.